Swift Transportation last year led the trucking industry in raising driver pay, and that pay raise, however costly, is paying off handsomely for the largest U.S. truckload carrier as driver retention improves and profits rise 27 percent from a year ago.

Roadrunner Transportation Systems has acquired Stagecoach Cartage and Distribution for $35 million, continuing the buying spree it embarked on in 2013 as merger and acquisition activity dominates the transportation and logistics industries.

DHL Global Forwarding's new less-than-truckload cross-border service isn't just about US-Mexico trade. It's part of growing shipper demand for multimodal, multiregional logistics and transportation services.

When it comes to containerized traffic in manufactured goods, the key ports in Mexico’s $5 billion port infrastructure initiative will remain Veracruz on the Gulf, where volumes have soared from 543,000 TEUs in 2001 to nearly 850,000 in 2014 and a projected 894,000 TEUs this year, and Lazaro Cardenas along the Pacific coast, which is handling 1 million TEUs a year, a decade after opening.

As Mexico’s manufacturing output has increased steadily over the last decade, so has the throughput of its major ports along the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean. Mexico in 2014 handled more than 5.7 million 20-foot-equivalent container units, 10 times more than it handled in the first full year of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1995. To keep pace with that growth, Mexico’s federal government in April announced it is investing $5 billion in its ports.

Mexico is no longer the low-wage sourcing location for low-value consumer products for the U.S. market that it was two decades ago when the North American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. and Canada was implemented.

A proposal that could drastically increase costs for harbor pilots at the Port of Savannah could cause operational problems at the U.S. South Atlantic’s busiest port, a Georgia congressman warned last week.

High demand for Mexican produce and the long-term drought in California are generating strong demand for refrigerated trucking equipment in Texas, especially on the spot market. That’s pushing up spot truck rates in states along the U.S.-Mexican border.